Twenty-one fellows participated in the 37th ICANN International Public Meeting held March 7-12 in Nairobi, Kenya. There were 33 candidates who met the program criteria, and of those 26 were originally selected to attend, from a pool of 119 applications that were received for this meeting. Five individuals were deferred to the Brussels meeting this June, 1 gentleman was unable to attend at the last minute due to personal circumstances, and 2 alternates were able to fill available spots within the allotted timeframe. Of the participating fellows, there were 7 alumni of the fellowship program, 1 first time fellowship who had attended at least 1 ICANN meeting previously, and 13 first time ICANN meeting attendees.
All of the ICANN regions were represented, though per the Fellowship Program specifications the emphasis for representation was on the Africa region, and the following are the countries from which the fellows hail: Costa Rico, Paraguay, Papa New Guinea, Pakistan, Egypt, Bulgaria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Zambia, Mali, Tanzania, Botswana, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa.
The focused morning meeting workshops, which are a mainstay of the program and mandatory for all participants to attend, covered the following topics: ICANN 101-the Basics, overview of the ccNSO, AFTLD and .KE, with emphasis on registry best practices, informational sessions on NomCom, ISOC and the At-Large organization, Internet Governance and ICANN Global Partnerships. In addition, there were 4 presentations from Fellowship Alumni covering IDN Fast Track, the GAC, expectations for the week ahead and goals for the participants when they return home in order to continue to promote the work of ICANN and its constituent groups. The sessions are highly interactive, as they provide a small group opportunity to get questions answered by experienced members of staff and the community.
Two of the many highlights were the Sunday night social networking with the AFRALO showcase, as well as the chance for 14 of the 21 Fellows to attend 2 roundtables with Rod Beckstrom, which provided the chance to ask one-on-one questions regarding ICANN, as well as share current issues in their country.
As the Fellowship program matures, the community will see that many of the participants are actually very active in their regions prior to coming to their first ICANN meeting; all they have lacked is the opportunity and funding to get to the meeting location. Members of the Fellowship Alumni are currently working within the ccNSO (Gihan Dias, Dr. Paulos Nyirenda, Dr. Alioune Traore, David Main, Denzil West, Eric Akumiah, Fahd Batayneh), gNSO (Olga Cavalli,), GAC (Nelly Stoyanova, Aimal Marjan) ALAC (Tijani Ben Jemaa, Fouad Bajwa) and NomCom (Yaovi Atohoun – also ALAC), to just name a few. We can look forward to seeing many of these faces at the ICANN meetings in the future, either as public forum participants, members of various AC’s and SO’s and their working groups, and in the not too distant future, potential members of the ICANN board.
By the conclusion of the meeting week, this diverse group of individuals had already moved ahead with their next steps to become more inclusive in the ICANN process: 1 alumni is considering his application for a NomCom position, another applied to ALAC, a blog and facebook group were created to allow continued communication and outreach, presentations were developed to share the experience with those back home in their region, and the meeting transcripts will reflect several names from the Program who were vocal and interactive on councils, in meetings and forums.
We look forward to seeing these names and faces in the years ahead, with stories in the ICANN monthly magazine, blogs, public comment, and as community members taking more active roles in their chosen constituency.
For the complete list of Nairobi fellows and their photo, as well as information on the Fellowship Program, please go to http://www.icann.org/en/fellowships/.